De Sheikh🐧

Edel is one of my most high-conviction plays for this cycle. Tokenised equities is going to very quickly become one of the largest sectors of Crypto, and I really think Edel is positioned to be at the top of this. At the moment this is a very undervalued project. I've shared about this a bit, but never gone into true detail why. But here, I’ve put together a detailed thread to help you understand why, in my view, it will not be undervalued for long and how, in my view, it's one of the best R/R bets in the space. - The Basis. Broadly, they are building the margin layer for tokenised equities, the infrastructure that turns passive equity holdings into productive assets that can earn, borrow, hedge, and trade. Tokenisation enables assets/equities to get on-chain. The harder and more valuable problem is what those assets can do once they arrive there. Trillions in equities and other traditional assets are moving toward this programmable form, and they will need liquidity, continuous trading, leverage, credit, and capital efficient ways to put portfolios to work without selling. This is already an extremely large industry in Traditional Finance with roughly $2.5 trillion in outstanding loaned securities generating around $10 billion in annual revenue. It’s no joke. And Edel is positioning itself as the connective infrastructure those assets move and trade through, rather than another issuance surface. They’re going for the whole pie, and as you will see below, are primed to do so. - Institutional Backing & Market Understanding In terms of the expertise behind this, Edel is not just another micro cap. Edel’s leadership and advisory squad spans the institutions that actually run global equity finance. A chap named Brad Klaas is central to this. More than 30 years ago he helped build and scale the securities lending business at what became BlackRock, growing operations from roughly $1 billion to nearly $40 billion in lendable assets. He later held senior roles at BNP Paribas and Bank of America, including electronic trading and prime brokerage businesses, and navigated difficult market periods while retaining the majority of revenues. His most recent work was as Digital Assets & Strategic Initiatives Lead at Franklin Templeton(almost $2tn AUM), where he focused on institutional tokenised collateral products and partnerships. This guy now sits on Edel’s board and shapes institutional strategy, which cannot be emphasised enough how huge that is.⁠ Co-founder James Sherborne brings equity research and capital markets experience from Berenberg, along with later work building regulated crypto corporate finance capabilities. The broader team and advisors cover it all. Web3 product, engineering, and institutional credit. This breadth of experience is insanely strong. It covers all the securities lending, margin, and prime brokerage functions Edel is bringing on-chain. The team is absolutely stacked. - Canton Network Edel has concentrated its build on the Canton Network, a privacy enabled public Layer 1 designed for regulated institutional finance. Canton’s sub transaction privacy means parties see only the data they are entitled to see, enabling confidential multi party workflows while still supporting atomic settlement and interoperability. This is the architecture already used in production by major market infrastructure players for repo, collateral, and related flows. Edel is a Featured App on Canton. It has partnered with Flowdesk for institutional grade market making and liquidity on its Canton markets. Institutional custody considerations are part of the broader positioning. The project is also participating in the DTC Digital Assets Solutions Industry Working Group, convened to provide feedback on the creation of the DTCC Tokenisation Service, expected to launch in Q4 2026. Edel sits alongside more than 100 other members, including institutions at the core of U.S. capital markets such as the NYSE, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citadel Securities, as well as other tokenisation participants. Overall, they have the A-team, the network, and the seat at the table. - Technology and Product Architecture Edel’s system is built around native Canton instruments and planned trading layers: Edel Stocks provide contractual economic exposure with 1:1 economic backing. Live index include SPYe, QQQe, NVDAe, and SPCXe. Total return economics, including dividends, are handled via a multiplier. Primary issuance and redemption are restricted to approved participants and secondary trading is available on venues such as Cantex Exchange. These are native Canton assets transferable across compatible wallets and applications. Edel Markets is the perpetual futures venue, combining off-chain execution with asynchronous Canton settlement. It is designed with privacy preserving features suitable for institutional and regulated use cases. Essentially, Edel lets you hold digital versions of stocks and ETFs that track the real ones (including dividends), then use those holdings as collateral to trade leveraged versions of them, all on a privacy focused network built for institutions. - Traction and Revenue With virtually no marketing, Edel Stocks have reportedly generated nearly $20 million in tokenised equity volume. On the revenue side, Edel has reported generating tens of thousands of dollars daily, $20,000–$50,000, through Canton ecosystem rewards tied to activity. Trading fees, primary issuance/redemption fees, and future financing activity are positioned as additional recurring revenue streams that can flow into the ecosystem. Incredibly impressive revenue numbers for such a currently, low valued project. - The Bigger Picture Tokenisation is going to happen in all parts of life and is going to become an incredibly large industry via equities. And as DTCC and others advance tokenisation services and more equities become programmable, the demand shifts to the layers around those assets. Deep liquidity, continuous trading, leverage, credit, and ways for holders and institutions to put the same portfolio to work more efficiently. To picture this, traditional securities lending alone is estimated at roughly $2.5 trillion in outstanding loaned securities generating around $10 billion in annual revenue, most of it currently captured by intermediaries. The broader equity market is on the order of $110 trillion. The opportunity here is the productive infrastructure that sits on top of tokenised assets, which is exactly the margin, credit, trading, and financing layer Edel is assembling on Canton. The bottom line Is that Edel is building the rails those assets can trade, borrow against, and generate yield through, with institutional privacy, relationships, and market structure expertise baked in from the start. This is, in my view, a $1bn project currently trading at $20m Market Cap. You do not see this type of near perfectly aligned project, with the expertise, tech, and positioning, so accurately poised to capture a future Crypto dominating market, that has only just started becoming actualised. It’s not often these types of truly valuable opportunities come around, in my opinion. - @edeldotfinance $EDEL